In recent years, specialty food products, particularly Mexican food products, have become increasingly popular in the United States. Moreover, the increasing time demands upon families has caused an increase in the demand for heat and serve products. Particularly popular are frozen enchiladas, burritos, and other types of food products such as egg rolls that are offered for sale in the frozen food section of supermarkets. These foods are often sold individually or in packages containing several enchiladas or burritos. Typically the products need only be removed from the package, heated and served.
Historically, such products have been prepared manually by physically folding tortillas or other food wraps around a filling or fillings. This manual approach is time consuming, costly, and often produces products having an inconsistent or uneven appearance. In addition, manual preparation of these folded food-products introduces sanitation concerns.
In order to solve these problems, attempts have been made in the past to fabricate automated folding systems. However, such systems have typically been large and complex. For example, one automated folding system uses a series of plates that support the food wraps as they travel through the folding system. An individual plate supports each food wrap, and each plate has numerous folding parts that allow the plate to be manipulated to fold the food wrap supported by the plate. The plates travel through the system on a type of conveyor or drive, and then are reused once the food wrap that they support has been completely folded and removed from the plate. Due to the large number of moving parts in such a system creates, many complexities are created, which leads to malfunctions in the system and non-uniform folding of the food wraps.
Therefore, a need has arisen for a new method and apparatus for preparing a folded food product that overcome the disadvantages and deficiencies of the prior art.